Have you looked at Calais 2.0 as a data source for your site? It's Reuters venture into the Semantic Web, and its free content complete with tags so you can filter science-related items. (http://www.opencalais.com/)
What's your opinion about basing your start-up where the bulk of your customers are? For example, if you're gearing your product for use by the public sector, shouldn't you be based in the Virginia technology hub that supports Washington DC?